


A Lovesick Criminal's Memoir

by Lufelitan



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Heavy Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person, The Fluff Is Angst In Disguise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-10-21 05:39:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17636960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lufelitan/pseuds/Lufelitan
Summary: In the lonely confines of a musty prison cell, I write this memoir. Not as a testament to my crimes, but rather to commemorate my beloved.





	1. Introduction

German. What a wonderful language. Flexible, pragmatic. Gentle, yet firm. The true language of love. I've never felt more adored than when my beloved told me three simple words.  _Ich liebe dich._  My interest in the language was earned when I was very young. One of my father’s associates had come to Moscow from Bavaria to discuss business for a few weeks. I don’t remember the man’s name or his face, just that he shared my love for romantic literature and prose. He taught me a few words from his native tongue, basic phrases such as ‘how are you?’ and ‘I feel fine’. Before he returned to his homeland, he gave me a small collection of books, all of which he told me were captivating reads. All of them in German. Thus began my enthusiastic studies of the language, just so I could read and understand the books my father’s friend had given me.

My favorite word in the German lexicon is not a common noun, verb, or an adjective, but a name. Ludwig. Light and airy in pronunciation, powerful in definition. ‘Famous warrior’, it means. How fitting that such a name was given to a man who radiates strength and intimidation. Despite this, he had many less impressive nicknames. To his wife, he was Viky. To his brother, he was Lutz. To his friends, he was Ludva. But in my arms, beneath the sheets, naked and panting, he was just Ludwig. My Ludwig, and mine alone.

Indeed, Ludwig was a beautiful man, but he wasn’t my first romantic experience. Far from it. Like my fascination with German, I realized my attraction to the same sex at a young age. At one point, I had a brief affair with a Lithuanian boy, whose personality would define the traits that made me consider certain men more attractive than others. My ‘type’, as some would call it. You would think such a perverse habit would be the thing that got me incarcerated, but that's not the case. In reality, I’ve been declared guilty of far more sinister crimes.

I suppose I could give great detail about the unlawful things I‘ve done, but that’s not what I’m writing this for, is it? No. I’m writing this for Ludwig. That way everyone can know of the gorgeous man who stole my heart. That way his memory can live on forever, immortalized in paper and ink.


	2. Pride Before the Fall

I was born in 1888, in Moscow, Russia, amid that bitter winter I would quickly come to despise. My father was a respected member of the military, having served in the war against the Ottomans only a decade earlier. As such, he was quick to climb through the ranks of nobility. He, my mother, my sisters, and I lived a life of luxury. A life full of delicious foreign foods, such as stuffed pike, French-style peas, and Brown Windsor soup from the British Isles. My favorite of these foods was the Viennese torte, a spongy, rich chocolate confection that pleased the tongue as much as it pleased the eyes. We were invited to many parties and dances, sometimes personally by the Romanovs themselves. My sisters would wear colorful, elegant sarafans made of the finest silk and accented with the most intricate of lace, and I would arrive in a brocade kaftan lined with fur. Truly, we had the best lives God could offer us.

My mother could only indulge in such divine splendor for a short time, for she had died giving birth to my younger sister, Natalya. People like to pity me for my motherlessness, but in reality, it never affected me much. I was only three when she died after all. I have no clear memory of her. Only the vague feeling of sunny warmth, quickly quenched by the winter of her death. Nothing to dwell upon.

In place of my deceased mother and my neglectful father, I had my big sister. Yekaterina was seven years my senior and raised me and Natalya since birth. She appreciated the more sentimental aspects of life. The romantic aspects. She believed in fate, and that everyone was destined to be with a partner designed especially for them. A soulmate. She introduced me to a wide variety of novels and poems, most of which entertained those concepts. I had a rather lonely childhood; the other boys enjoyed teasing me for their own amusement, so my big sister and her love stories provided me with necessary comfort. She gave me my most prized possession: a white scarf, knitted by her own hands. It’s all I have left of her, and to this day I use it to warm myself during the cold winter months. In a way, it’s like carrying part of her soul with me. I am not sure where she is nowadays. Hopefully married to a man who treasures her for all she’s worth. Maybe she has children. They‘d be the luckiest children in the world, no doubt. Part of me’s glad we didn’t keep in touch. She’d probably have nothing nice to say about my current situation. Or what I’ve done.  

Despite my lavish conditions at home, I yearned to travel elsewhere. Somewhere where the sun shines all year round, and flowers grew no matter the season. Many times I begged my father to take me with him on his trips abroad, but he opposed. Said he wasn’t willing to drag an unruly child throughout Europe. He often left me in the care of Yekaterina and our servants as he explored the world. Fortunately, the world came to me instead. Cooks and housekeepers would come from all over the continent, as would my father’s colleagues. I was exposed to many cultures and languages during my formative years, and I didn't even have to leave Moscow.

In regard to my sexual preferences, it’s humorous how my young mind didn’t recognize them sooner. I saw nothing in the fact that my admiration for Tsar Nicholas seemed to go beyond the typical hero worship expected of boys my age. If anything, it was more in line with Natalya’s fondness for him. It was one of the few things we bonded over. I also thought nothing of my tendency to pause and stare longingly at the portraits of soldiers hanging around the house. “Oh, how cute,” the observing handmaids would say. “Little Vanya wants to fight for his country like his father did.” I believed that for the longest time, because there seemed to be no other reasonable explanation for my interests. My views shifted once I entered adolescence. My body was changing, and my mind wasn’t so innocent anymore. Suddenly something about the male form had become irresistibly alluring. Something that prompted strange, enjoyable reactions from my body. Something I wanted to see, to touch, to embrace. I recall many guilty nights spent in bed, pleasuring myself, loaning fantasies from the erotic novels I had read. Thinking about those handsome men in uniform.

I never fully grasped the extent of my attractions until I turned fourteen. That was the year Father hired a new housemaid from Lithuania, whose son would soon become my first lover. Together, we would delve deep into our desires. Deeper than we ever could alone.


	3. My First Love

Time is a naturally destructive element. Every empire will fall, every corpse will rot, and every memory will fade. It's simply a matter of time. With that in mind, forgive me if I can't provide a precise description of Tolys, my first lover. All that's left of him is shards of pleasant recollections and the ghost of the passions he evoked. But that's where the beauty of the written word comes in. Through it, we can prevent memories from falling into the cataclysmic hands of time.

I met Tolys in the summer. According to Father, he and his mother used to own a horse farm in a small Lithuanian town. After his father died of disease, they were unable to keep the land or livestock. So they came to Moscow, hoping to find a job in servitude. Now that they were here, Tolys would tend to our stables, and his mother would clean around the house.

Normally I wouldn't have cared less about the arrival of new servants, but Tolys had a mystifying aura about him I just couldn't ignore. He was young, about my age, but he had a serious demeanor that made him seem much older. Like a soldier. Though he was obviously male, his beauty was the rare kind that transcended the earthly concept of gender. The heavenly, angelic kind of beauty. The kind that shone through even when it was covered in dirt and horse muck. I admired him from afar, through passing glances and the occasional greeting. My tongue would ache to carry the conversation further, but I would bite it and say no more. Perhaps it was more than just common shyness. Perhaps deep down, I feared I didn't deserve to be in the presence of such a boy, let alone earn his friendship or love. Or maybe I thought learning more about Tolys would taint the perfect image I had in my head. But such complex emotions are beyond the comprehension of children. They just feel them, and they are frustrated by them.

Yekaterina must have noticed my yearnings, for two weeks after Tolys' arrival, she suggested I play a game with him in the courtyard. She probably thought I sought him as a playmate instead of a love interest, but I can't say for sure. Big siblings have a strange way of knowing things, even if you don't tell them. At first I denied her advice, but she was oddly persistent. I finally had a chance to make friends with a boy my own age, she told me. That was something I'd never had great luck with. To make her happy and to get her off my back, I gave in and invited Tolys to play a game of gorodki.

Despite Tolys' lean and muscular form, he was not a good gorodki player by any means. There was one moment in our game in which he sent his bat flying through an open window, for which he would receive a stern lecture from his mother later that evening. He also worried too much, constantly concerned about what would happen if he didn't return to the stables soon. He didn't take well to me poking fun at him for those qualities, either. But he also had his fair share of good attributes. For one, he was intelligent and well-versed in military history. Second, his worrying nature stemmed from his indiscriminating compassion for everyone, man, horse, or otherwise. When asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, Tolys said he wanted to be a combat medic, which made sense. Why wouldn't an angel want to heal hapless soldiers? I clung on to every word he said, for each one sparked a small warmth in my chest. Suddenly, I wasn't so lonely anymore.

We became good friends that day. Over the next few weeks, we deepened our connection through walks around the gardens, intellectual conversation in the library, and a few more games of gorodki. I might have enjoyed it if I wasn't falling so hopelessly in love. My feelings made me both giddy and exasperated. I wanted to shout about my love in the streets, to write about it on the walls, and to make sure all of Moscow knew about the beautiful angel God had sent me. But I couldn't, because we were both men. Instead, I confessed my love in a hesitant whisper, so that only Tolys could hear. I expected him to run, scream in disgust, or call me names. Instead, he leaned in close and whispered, "I love you too."

At first, our affections were immature and skittish, limited to awkward, dry kisses behind closed doors. As the summer went on, we became more daring. We'd sneak into each other's rooms late at night, where we'd hold on to each other tighter, and let our lips linger a little longer. By fall, we were taking advantage of every private moment to embrace each other and proclaim our love to one another. The only one who caught on was Natalya, who had walked in on us one fateful morning. She was angry, more so at Tolys than me. She threatened to tell Father about the horrible boy who had seduced her big brother. Fortunately, I kept her quiet with promises of surrendered desserts. Little girls can't spill secrets if their mouths are stuffed with Medovik.

That is not to say our relationship was purely physical. Tolys was an impeccable writer, and would often share his poems with me. Poems that expressed his loves, his pains, and his desires. There were quite a few dedicated to me in particular. To return the sentiment, I picked up a pen and wrote a few verses of my own. My prose was clumsy and erractic, but Tolys didn't seem to care. He praised me for trying and would always tell me about how I was improving. Poetry, gorodki, and secretive affections. Those were the things that defined our courtship, as well as the concepts that made my life feel less void.

Tolys would die of hypothermia that winter, and the world would grow ten times colder.

 


	4. Higher Education

After Tolys’ death, I was inconsolable. I didn’t eat, for even the sweetest of cakes tasted like dirt. Instead of sleeping, I tossed and turned restlessly until the sun reared its ugly head over the horizon. And just when I thought I had gotten over Tolys, the most minuscule of things would send me spiraling back down into despair. Things like the mention of his name, the sight of the poems I still kept in my room, or returning to the courtyard where we’d played that first game of gorodki. Things that were small, but certainly not meaningless.

My family did not seem to understand my plight. As far as Father knew, Tolys was just another servant, and my distress over his death annoyed him more than it earned his sympathy. Natalya was no better; she still seemed baffled at the thought of me loving another boy in such a way. Yekaterina tried, at least. She offered a shoulder to cry on and made sure I still took care of myself. She knew Tolys was very dear to me, but she wasn’t aware of the extent. Mourning a lover is far different than mourning a friend. When in love, you feel as if your hearts, minds, and souls have intertwined and became one whole being, and when death tears that person away, you are left as a mere half. A lonely, barely functioning half. 

Hidden beneath my depression was a fiery anger. Anger towards my family for not comprehending the depths of my grief. Anger toward the world that prevented me from making them understand. Anger toward God for taking someone so precious, so _warm_ , from me. I concluded that Tolys’ death must have been some sort of divine punishment for my deviancy. I spent many hours praying for forgiveness, crying, and begging for my heart to change. When it didn’t, I thought I was too far gone to be forgiven. I thought that I was broken.

One frigid winter night, my grief and shame drove me to the edge of the balcony outside my room. I was four stories above the ground, and the snow below me had turned into a layer of solid ice. If I had thrown myself off at that moment, it would have been enough to kill me. If not, I would have surely frozen before someone found me in the morning. The only thing that stopped me from carrying through with my plan was my cowardice. As much as I entertained the thought of death, I was terrified of it, and I was even more scared of what may come after it. Although if I were to try it now, I’m sure I wouldn’t fear much at all.

Eventually, I was able to recover from my dejection, but there was still a heavy aching in my heart and an absolute certainty I would never love again. The rest of my formative years contain little of note. When I was 16, I lost my virginity to an older man I met at a bathhouse. It was a passionless affair, and it was only a means of releasing my suppressed urges. Such encounters would become commonplace in my adulthood. One year later, Father was called away to fight the Japanese in Manchuria. The December after his return would be marked by peasants rioting in the streets, leaving blood and paranoia in their wake. I remember the ear-splitting explosions of nearby bombs. Shrieks of anger and terror ringing out between the gunshots. My home had become a battlefield, and the police and socialists had become its belligerents. When it ended, I was sure of only one thing. I never wanted to go through that again.

Amidst all of this was Natalya’s threat of revealing my secret if I didn’t bend to her whims. She became increasingly troublesome, her desire for sweets evolving into a demand for free alcohol and throwing knives. Every once in a while, she would send me to fight any boy she felt had betrayed her somehow, although I was never quite sure why. It certainly wasn’t because she was too weak to fight them on her own. The crazy woman could probably take on an entire army and exit unscathed. I love my little sister dearly, but she is a force to be reckoned with. My deepest condolences go to the man who decided to marry her.

I managed to escape my sister’s perpetual blackmailing when I was accepted to attend a university in Saint Petersburg. It was a whole day’s travel away from Moscow, so I could do whatever I pleased with little fear of my family finding out.

At the capital, I devoted my studies to foreign languages and the literary arts. My German improved significantly, and I would also become fairly fluent in French, English, and Latin. The analytical papers I wrote for my literature courses were well received, and my original works even more so. I suppose Tolys’ advice helped me in that respect.

Although my attempts at friendship amongst my own sex remained fruitless, I was strangely popular with women. Many have approached me during my time at university, and some were pretty enough to earn jealous stares from my male peers. I had no interest in dating them, so I warded them off with vague statements about how I had only been in love once before, and that I was not willing to do so again. One woman, a part-time student named Anna, was especially stubborn. My talk of romantic tragedy gained her pity, but it also made her more desperate to win me over. It seemed as if she wanted to be the first to successfully charm the heartbroken man from Moscow.

My sexual relations with male strangers continued well into my adulthood. Those interactions lead me to discover an underground culture of people such as myself. Homosexuals, sodomites, inverts, or whatever you wish to call them. You could often find them at Nevsky Prospekt or around the Zoological Garden, communicating through prolonged gazes and the sharing of cigarettes. They would hold exclusive house parties, which often began with tea infused with cognac, continued with a lavish dinner, and concluded with a mass orgy. Much different than the parties my sisters and I attended as children.

The number of times I’ve woken up in someone else’s house with an unfamiliar man lying next to me is more than I can count.

That is not to say I indulged in my promiscuity with reckless abandon. I still held steadfast in my religious beliefs, even if my habits contradicted it. I thought of my sexual interests as an ungodly addiction, one that could only be cured through prayer and confession. Obviously, such a mindset was futile. My attempts at abstinence would only last a few weeks before being foiled by some attractive man with broad shoulders and a flirtatious smile. It was as if I lived two lives. One of the church, and one of my own desires. One of repression, and one of shame. Neither made me happy. My soul was famished. I wanted something more.

I spent the last year of my studies abroad in Vienna, where I met a young French tourist who, while failing to completely satisfy my aching soul, helped me come to terms with who I was.


End file.
